Related papers: Could kilomasers pinpoint supermassive stars?
We examine the possibility that very massive stars greatly exceeding the commonly adopted stellar mass limit of 150 Msun may be present in young star clusters in the local universe. We identify ten candidate clusters, some of which may host…
The processes leading to the birth of low-mass stars such as our Sun have been well studied, but the formation of high-mass (> 8 x Sun's mass) stars has heretofore remained poorly understood. Recent observational studies suggest that…
We present High Sensitivity Array observation of the water megamasers of NGC 1068. We obtain absolute astrometry with 0.3 mas precision that confirms the association of the disk masers with the nuclear radio continuum source S1. The new…
We present imaging observations at 1.3 mm wavelength of Class I protostars in the Taurus star forming region, obtained with the CARMA interferometer. Of an initial sample of 10 objects, we detected and imaged millimeter wavelength emission…
Circumstellar disks are an essential ingredient of the formation of low-mass stars. It is unclear, however, whether the accretion-disk paradigm can also account for the formation of stars more massive than about 10 solar masses, in which…
High-mass stars are thought to accumulate much of their mass via short, infrequent bursts of disk-aided accretion. Such accretion events are rare and difficult to observe directly but are known to drive enhanced maser emission. In this…
We propose that supermassive stars may form in quasar accretion disks, and we discuss possible observational consequences. The structure and stability of very massive stars are reviewed. Because of high accretion rates, quasar disks are…
We present high resolution (sub-mas) VLBI maps of nuclear H2O megamasers for seven galaxies. In UGC6093, the well-aligned systemic masers and high-velocity masers originate in an edge-on, flat disk and we determine the mass of the central…
Milliarcsecond VLBI maps of regions containing 6.7 GHz methanol maser emission have lead to the recent discovery of ring-like distributions of maser spots and the plausible hypothesis that they may be tracing circumstellar disks around…
The central 2x1 kpc of the starburst galaxy NGC 253 has been imaged using the Submillimeter Array at a 60 pc resolution in the J=2-1 transitions of 12CO, 13CO, and C18O as well as in the 1.3 mm continuum. Molecular gas and dust are mainly…
NGC7538 IRS1 is considered the best high-mass accretion disk candidate around an O-type young star in the northern hemisphere. We investigated the 3D kinematics and dynamics of circumstellar gas with very high linear resolution, from tens…
NGC 253 hosts the nearest nuclear starburst. Previous observations show a region rich in molecular gas, with dense clouds associated with recent star formation. We used ALMA to image the 350 GHz dust continuum and molecular line emission…
We address the question of whether the formation of high-mass stars is similar to or differs from that of solar-mass stars through new molecular line observations and modeling of the accretion flow around the massive protostar…
We present an edge-on Keplerian disc model to explain the main component of the 12.2 and 6.7 GHz methanol maser emission detected toward NGC7538-IRS1 N. The brightness distribution and spectrum of the line of bright masers are successfully…
Disk galaxies are common in our universe and this is a source of concern for hierarchical formation models like LCDM. Here we investigate this issue as motivated by raw merger statistics derived for galaxy-size dark matter halos from LCDM…
Three new obscured Milky Way clusters were detected as surface density peaks in the 2MASS point source catalog during our on-going search for hidden globular clusters and massive Arches-like star clusters. One more cluster was discovered…
Accretion disks are one of the key ingredients of the star formation process. They redistribute angular momentum and, in the case of high-mass stars (M > 8Msun), disks would relieve the radiation pressure on the accreting material, in…
We present submillimeter spectra of the (proto-)super star cluster (SSC) candidates in the starbursting center of the nearby galaxy NGC 253 identified by Leroy et al. (2018). The 2.5pc resolution of our ALMA cycle 3 observations approach…
We present high resolution (R~50,000) spectroastrometry over the CO 1st overtone bandhead of a sample of seven intermediate/massive young stellar objects. These are primarily drawn from the red MSX source (RMS) survey, a systematic search…
Interferometric observations of the W33A massive star-formation region, performed with the Submillimeter Array (SMA) and the Very Large Array (VLA) at resolutions from 5 arcsec (0.1 pc) to 0.5 arcsec (0.01 pc) are presented. Our three main…